[gimp-web] content: news for a 2021 report.

[Jehan <jehanp src gnome org>]

commit 009375346f26b465ea3aab7157fd60b929c45ccb
Author: Jehan <jehan girinstud io>
Date:   Fri Dec 31 18:24:36 2021 +0100

    content: news for a 2021 report.

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+Title: 2021 annual report
+Date: 2021-12-31
+Category: News
+Authors: Jehan
+Slug: gimp-2021-annual-report
+Summary: What happened in 2021?
+Image: 2021-12-wilber-and-co-year-end-party.png
+
+While we are ending 2021, let's sum up the year. For my first year as
+co-maintainer, I thought it would be a good idea to write this report in
+my name so that I can give personal impressions of how it is to work on
+GIMP and what it means to me.
+
+<figure>
+<img src="{attach}2021-12-wilber-and-co-year-end-party.png" alt="Hello 2022 - Wilber and co. comics strip by 
Aryeom"/>
+<figcaption>
+<em>"Hello 2022" by <a href="https://film.zemarmot.net";>Aryeom</a>, Creative Commons by-sa 4.0 - GIMP 2021 
annual report</em>
+</figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+[TOC]
+
+# Statistics
+
+In 2021, we had:
+
+- **4 stable releases** (GIMP 2.10.24, 2.10.26, 2.10.28 and 2.10.30)
+- **2 development releases** (GIMP 2.99.6 and 2.99.8).
+- **1179 commits** on the unstable development branch (2.99.x, future
+  3.0) and **407 commits** on the stable development branch (2.10.x) of
+  the main repository.
+- **91 contributors** on the main repository, including (some people belong
+  to several categories):
+    * 41 developers
+    * 42 translators
+    * 24 contributors to resources (icons, themes, in-code
+      documentation) or build improvements.
+- 22 people contributed more than 10 commits in the main repository,
+  among which 2 contributors did more than 100 commits (Jacob Boerema
+  and myself), among which only one (myself) did more than 500.
+- **247 commits** to GIMP's website (`gimp.org`, i.e. right here) by 14
+  contributors.
+- **31 commits** to [babl](https://gegl.org/babl/) by 6 contributors.
+- **229 commits** to [GEGL](https://gegl.org/) by 33 contributors.
+- **1179 commits** to [ctx](https://ctx.graphics/) by 3 contributors
+  (mostly Øyvind Kolås).
+- **255 commits** in `gimp-help` (our manual), whose main contributor is
+  Jacob Boerema who is doing an awesome work reviving it.
+- **53 commits** in `gimp-macos-build` (our repository for the macOS build)
+  by 4 contributors (mostly by Lukas Oberhuber who took over
+  maintainance of the macOS package).
+- **185 reports fixed** in our 2021 releases and **hundreds** more
+  handled, triaged, answered to, worked on…
+- Many patches contributed by GIMP contributors in various other
+  projects we use (GLib, GTK, Cairo, GExiv2 and others… We don't keep
+  track) and an uncountable number of issues reported by our
+  contributors to other projects.
+- **Helping** (or **getting helped** by) other Free Software when we
+  can, e.g. the very nice [Siril](https://siril.org/) project for
+  astronomical image processing and other software, because unlike what
+  some think, we are not in a market or a competition! We all work
+  together to make a better graphics work environment.
+- And more!
+
+In the end, that's quite a lot of work proudly brought to you by GIMP.
+As you may notice, we have quite some contributions, yet the core work
+is still actually done by a handful of people as most contributions
+are one-off (out of the 91 contributors, 69 contributed less than 10
+commits, and among these 51 contributed a single commit).
+
+I want to commend [Jacob Boerema](https://www.jacobboerema.nl/en/) in
+particular who is the biggest contributor this year on the stable
+branch, while I must admit I mostly focus on the development branch and
+sometimes tend to neglect a bit the stable branch 😒! Thanks Jacob! 🤗
+
+And we should never forget `babl`, `GEGL` and the new project `ctx` by
+Øyvind Kolås as these constitute the core of GIMP imaging engine and are
+considered as much a part of GIMP project as the interface itself.
+
+# Building a lovely team
+
+You might have noticed a regular section for the last few news titled
+"*Team news*" where we list changes in the team, in particular new
+contributors who are given more access to the tracker or the source
+repository. I have been trying to be more and more proactive into
+integrating people into the core team.
+
+Indeed as you saw in the statistics, Jacob Boerema is the only other
+contributor who did more than 100 commits in 2021, while I did a bit
+over 500. So I want to improve this ratio and increase the *bus factor*.
+
+GIMP team has always been very welcoming, at least ever since I started
+contributing, back in 2012 and this is even why I stayed back then. I
+want to perpetuate this tradition. My goal is to identify faster the
+people to give more responsibility to (note that technical skills are
+important but social skills — in other words being a good person and
+nice to others — is my priority checkbox). Well it's definitely an evil
+trick 🦹 to lessen my own burden, but I also expect this to make it way
+more fun 🎡 contributing to the project (based on personal experience)!
+
+Therefore let me give special props to Jacob Boerema for his tireless
+work on file format support and more, Niels de Graef for his invaluable
+help and good expertise with GTK, Luca Bacci for his very nice work on
+input device support, helping on Windows and his GTK expertise, Daniel
+Novomesky for making HEIF/AVIF and JPEG-XL first-class formats…
+
+Let's not forget recurring contributors such as Massimo Valentini, Lloyd
+Konneker… (what would we do without these people never giving up on GIMP,
+years after years?!) and promising newcomers like Stanislav Grinkov.
+
+Now let's applaud our packagers: Jernej Simončič has been around in GIMP
+for as long as I could remember, flawlessly making Windows installers
+like a solid rock to rely on; macOS history is bumpier yet Lukas
+Oberhuber has been doing an outstanding work lately so I sure hope he'll
+stay around; on Flatpak side, Hubert Figuière helps quite a lot too (and
+I <del>secretly</del> 🤫 hope he will end up taking over me maintaining our
+stable, beta and nightly flatpak-s!).
+
+At the end of the day, GIMP is much bigger than just developers, it's a
+community. What would we do without people helping for the website, bug
+triaging, infrastructure and more? And let's not forget the translators,
+so many of them! I just love all of you! Sorry that I cannot just name
+everyone (in case I forgot you, don't take it the wrong way, there are
+just so many awesome people around!).
+
+What I like to tell everyone is that GIMP is both a community software
+and Free Software, or simply a **Community, Free Software**. This double
+concept is extremely important to me and this is why I love GIMP and why
+both Aryeom and I (from [ZeMarmot projet](https://film.zemarmot.net/),
+from which our heavy-lifting contributions really started) stuck with
+it. This is about humans meeting each others and trying to do something
+nice together (even though each's personal end goal might be different).
+Everything works wonderfully as long as we remember to be good to each
+other. 🤗
+
+Therefore **to all contributors (of any specialties) who helped GIMP so
+far, I want to say a huge thank you! GIMP is what it is thanks to you!**
+🙏
+
+# GIMP 3.0 approaching
+
+With 4 development versions released already, you know that we are
+working very hard on the future: GIMP 3.0.
+
+Some features took a lot of time, mostly when we changed core logics. I
+am thinking in particular about the code for multi-selection of layers.
+It's not that selecting multiple items in a list is hard to implement,
+it's that any feature in the whole application has been forever
+expecting just one layer or one channel selected. So what happens when
+there are 2, 3 or any number of items selected? Every feature, every
+tool, every plug-in and filter has to be rethought for this new use
+case. This is a huge work and it has been 2 years I have been on and off
+on this one in between porting or developing other code and reviewing
+contributors' code. Fortunately this change is nearing the end lately
+(not completely finished though).
+So that's a great progress.
+
+By the way, a part of this work has been to get rid of the "link" (chain
+⛓ icon in the `Layers` dockable) concept in favor of multi-selection
+(and layer search and storage as a replacement concept for the ability
+to save layer links). This part is also done now. I'll talk more about
+this in the GIMP 2.99.10 release news.
+
+<figure>
+<img src="{attach}2021-annual-report-multi-layer-replace-link.gif" alt="Linked layer concept replaced by 
layer search"/>
+<figcaption>
+<em>Link concept replaced by multi-layer search, lock icons moved - GIMP dev branch</em>
+</figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+Among other blockers which I [listed a year
+ago](https://www.patreon.com/posts/what-remains-to-40087754), we are
+steadily progressing on our GTK3 port and Wayland support as well as
+stabilizing the plug-in API. I do hope these will be considered in a
+good enough state soon enough so that we can consider having a release
+candidate.
+
+On the other hand, the [space
+invasion](https://www.gimp.org/news/2020/11/06/gimp-2-99-2-released/#space-invasion)
+has been a bit on the slow pace in 2021 so this is definitely one topic
+we need to get back full-on very soon. Same for the [extension
+platform](https://www.gimp.org/news/2020/11/06/gimp-2-99-2-released/#extensions).
+
+# GEGL, babl and ctx
+
+The core 🫀⚙️  of modern GIMP is [GEGL](https://gegl.org/), a library project
+nearly as old as GIMP itself, by the same core of people, even though
+the first [tentative integrations only happened in GIMP
+2.6](https://www.gimp.org/release-notes/gimp-2.6.html#gegl), and since
+then slowly making its way to be the main engine behind most pixel
+manipulation in the software.
+
+GEGL development has been slowing down a bit since 2019, but mostly
+because it is becoming stabler by the day, which is really when things
+are getting good, solid and interesting.
+Now it would still be unfair to forget talking about the recent support
+of the `CMYK` color model in GEGL, which means we are a step closer to
+get some support in GIMP itself.
+
+Another exciting thing is the new project Øyvind Kolås has been working
+on these days: [ctx](https://ctx.graphics/), a vector graphics library.
+
+Now I know it may not sound as useful when you develop a raster graphics
+application, but there are still a lot of intersecting topics. One of
+these topics is the graphics interface itself which is usually rendered
+out of vector primitives. In GTK case, the rendering is going through
+Cairo. Øyvind has been working a lot to both render [nicer and
+faster](https://www.patreon.com/posts/gegl-vectors-ctx-53188476) than
+Cairo, or similarly, on many cases. `ctx` also has color-management
+thought into the framework from the ground up as a first-class citizen.
+
+Of course `ctx` is still heavily under work as can be seen by the
+intense commit rate so we'll have to see where it goes, but this is for
+sure exciting since Øyvind is a well-proven excellent R&D developer.
+
+There are other areas where `ctx` is useful, such as the few GEGL
+operations with vector components which have already been ported to this
+new library (e.g. `gegl:fill-path`) and text itself is usually rendered
+through vector shapes (so who knows what might happen when we improve
+text support?). GIMP is not going to refocus on vector graphics anytime
+soon, but we may definitely get more vector-related features as we go
+(anyone who follow a bit *ZeMarmot*'s work knows that we are really
+looking into improved ways for SVG integration for instance, such
+as in my early, not merged yet, [link layer
+experiment](https://www.patreon.com/posts/gimp-dev-report-39631718)).
+When we do more vector work, `ctx` will definitely be a top contender.
+
+I can already hear Øyvind telling me that `ctx` is actually much more
+than these few areas I summed up here. So let me be sorry in advance,
+Øyvind! This is why this report is in my name, taking into account my
+own limitations in understanding your bigger plans, and looking forward
+to be pleasantly surprised and amazed in the future! 🤯
+
+# Infrastructure, Documentation
+
+In all software projects, there is a constant which is mostly invisible,
+yet extremely important: infrastructure.
+
+You might have noticed we did speak a bit more than usual about this in
+2021 because it has really been something which used to bother me in my
+early years contributing to GIMP. I always thought we needed more
+robust, automated and transparent builds (which is getting there for
+[Windows](https://www.gimp.org/news/2021/10/20/gimp-2-99-8-released/#automated-release-installers),
+[macOS](https://www.gimp.org/news/2021/12/06/gimp-2-99-8-for-macos/)
+and Linux with Flatpak), better [download mirrors
+handling](https://www.gimp.org/news/2021/10/06/official-mirror-policy/),
+better [continuous
+integration](https://www.gimp.org/news/2021/10/20/gimp-2-99-8-released/#continuous-integration-changes)
+in general, better end-user documentation (Jacob is on it! And we have
+plans to get a more automated release and online testing policy of GIMP
+manual, which should happen in 2022)…
+
+We also had some work done in 2021 around developer documentation:
+[Akkana Peck](https://shallowsky.com/) (well known for having written
+books on GIMP) and Lloyd Konneker helped set up some initial
+documentation to port plug-ins and script from 2.10 to 3.0. Akkana also
+jump-started generating API references for the Python and Javascript
+bindings (with `g-ir-doc-tool`). Then very recently Niels De Graef
+migrated our generic API documentation generation from `gtk-doc` to
+`gi-docgen`, producing much more modern web documentation for plug-in
+developers. None of these are online yet, only built within the source
+repository for the time being. Getting an online update procedure for
+these is also on the `TODO` list.
+
+<figure>
+<img src="{attach}2021-annual-report-API-reference.png" alt="New API documentation - GIMP dev branch"/>
+<figcaption>
+<em>New API documentation for plug-in developers - GIMP dev branch</em>
+</figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+All these topics take a lot of time and are also necessary to get a much
+nicer experience using GIMP. So I am already quite proud of what
+we did in 2021 and really excited about our 2022 plans.
+
+# Plans for 2022
+
+You might wonder now: when will GIMP 3.0 be released?
+
+Nope sorry, as always, we don't answer such question. 😛
+What we can say is that we are hard at work for this to happen and for
+sure I'd like it to be earlier rather than later.
+
+As said above, apart from the code itself, I also want us to get our
+new online manual infrastructure improved before the release, but also
+our extension framework ready as well as a brand new developer website
+with documentation and more.
+So the plans are actually quite extensive and it's not only within GIMP
+code itself (though code definitely needs more work too).
+We'll see how things go from here!
+
+Don't forget you can [donate to the project and personally fund several
+GIMP developers](https://www.gimp.org/donating/), as a way to give back
+and accelerate the development of GIMP. As you know, myself as
+[maintainer of GIMP (through *ZeMarmot* project) and Øyvind as
+maintainer of GEGL are crowdfunding to be able to work full-time on free
+software](https://www.gimp.org/news/2021/07/27/support-gimp-developers-sustainable-development/).
+Any funding is appreciated to help us succeed in such endeavour.
+
+I wish you all a nice new year eve and a wonderful year 2022. 🥳